


lights are burning brighter (somewhere)

by captainkilly



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 07:55:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11664870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: "I had a dream about you."(Soulmate dreams don't happen in the Page family -- until they do.)





	lights are burning brighter (somewhere)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meinhiding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meinhiding/gifts).



> Fulfilling their Tumblr prompt.

She's older when she first has the dream. Flies out of her bedroom at three in the morning with the thought that she absolutely has to tell Kevin all about it right now. Comes to a halt just outside the closed door of his bedroom. There is a scream lodged in her throat when sleep fades from her brain. She shakes her head once. Twice. Three times. Tears jump to her eyes when she knows why she had the dream this late. Why neither one of the Page children ever grew up having a soulmate dream.

It's like the universe flipped a coin on their futures.

She can't tell Kevin because Kevin died three nights ago. They all say it was a car accident. Could've happened to anyone. She's certain that she won't like what she finds when she starts digging for the real cause. Why there is always a Page who dies young, why there is always one without a soulmate, why her parents keep looking at her with accusation lurking deep within their gaze.

She didn't kill Kevin. She knows this as certainly as she knows the sun will rise every morning. No. She didn't kill him. But she may as well have. She may as well have murdered her little brother -- not so little, not when he towered over her, but that's neither here nor there -- and dared the universe to change her future. That's how it feels now, standing outside his bedroom in the middle of the night with a technicolour dream lodged in the back of her skull. That's how it feels now when the dream wraps itself in the smell of fireworks and midnight thunder. That's how it feels when it should have been _her_ in that car and it should have been _Kevin_ with a dream in the pastel hazes of happily-ever-after.

Karen Page thinks she's going to argue with the universe over this choice until her dying day.

*

She's fast-tracking out of Vermont as fast as the wheels of her car can carry her. Her high school friends seem to think it's some kind of belated reaction to Kevin's passing, as though she hasn't grieved enough in the past year because she graduated with honours even though her world stopped moving months ago. Her mother seems to believe it's a death wish of the one child she could stand to lose. (Her encouragement to leave hurts, and Karen spends an hour in the car just screaming at the unfairness of it all.) Her father has stopped speaking with her. Has stopped seeing her. He only sees Kevin in all the shadows she casts on the walls of home.

One of the good things of having worked two jobs the past year is that she's got enough money to make it to New York. She's not sure why that matters until she's on the freeway and sees bright colours shoot through the sky overhead like the crackles of electricity. Has half a mind to turn around and drive anywhere else. Shit, she'd rather drive into the ocean than give in to what New York has in store for her. Comes to a screeching halt at one of the rest-stops and almost thinks about going home. Yet home is nowhere, and she is here, and she gets back into the car after downing three cups of lukewarm coffee. Tells herself to keep driving even when the universe seems to be conspiring against her.

She makes it to New York and finds a new appreciation for the word _irony_ when the only place she can afford for herself is an apartment in Hell's Kitchen.

*****

If there is one thing Kevin ever taught her, it's the art of bullshitting your way through life. She remembers her brother not by his accomplishments but by his one character flaw that always got him to the best parties and into the worst possible situations. It's what he would want even when her parents try to erase their children's manipulative smiles from their memories. She makes good use of it whenever she's in desperate need of a job (like now) and has no qualifications for better pay (like now) and still needs to pay her rent (like always). She puts on a smile that reeks of competence and fakes her way through a panel interview before she realises she's tapping out a steady rhythm on the table with her index finger.

They don't take that as a sign of nerves, somehow, and she's hired before she can find the air that lets her breathe again.

It all goes to hell eventually, because she's never been one to keep her own counsel and forget about the things she sees that don't make sense. Karen was born with a need to know things that leaves her sitting in her kitchen until the early morning hours pouring over numbers and documents until she spots a pattern. She was born with curiosity in her veins that lets her not take 'no' for an answer. Kevin's too dead and gone to caution her the way he used to.

She finds herself wishing she'd been the one to die when there is blood on her hands and she's taken in on a murder charge she _knows_ makes her look guilty as sin.

*****

Karen almost laughs when the steady tap of the cane lodges itself in her ears and there is midnight lurking in one of the brief smiles he directs at her. There is something familiar in how he carries himself through life. She thinks maybe this is how it feels to others, just a steady knowing that the person in front of you keeps their own secrets locked in their body the way you do yours. Maybe that's all soulmates are at the end of it: people who learn the darkness in someone else's bones and love their heart regardless.

She comes to work for him because she's got nowhere else to be. It seems this is where she is meant to wind up even when her own feet carry her into an investigation she can't yet see the end of. She comes to realise he doesn't know the first thing about what he is trying to fight. She can't help but think he's not quite what she thought. Right for someone, maybe, but not for her. Thinks that maybe sometimes dreams are _wrong_ and the world doesn't tremble when your hand finds someone else's and tries to hold on tight.

Her voice sneers a promise of death at the first person who threatens to crash the careful life she's built for herself. Her fingers find the unforgiving cold of a weapon and curl around it reflexively as though it's another hand to hold. She's never unloaded one before, though her words somehow come out stating otherwise. There's a brief moment of calm before she huffs out a breath and the man seated before her winds up dead, dead, _dead_.

The room smells like the better version of fireworks and she thinks she might finally have lost her war with the universe tonight.

Her heart beats technicolour longing all throughout the days that follow.

*****

She pursues him regardless of her heart's misgivings, assured that he likes her, and doesn't think about how dreams in this world are said to be prophetic.

Her heart skips a beat when she's in hospital protecting a client (bullshitting the entire staff all the way through, but who cares) and death comes to pay a social visit. She's breathless in getting the client out in time. Assured that she's not going to die tonight even when her nerves are screeching electric currents and her fingers fumble a pace she can't keep up with. She doesn't know what keeps her safe. Doesn't know why she even cares about what comes next now that she's smack in the middle of danger.

There's another life unfurling before her eyes when she goes on the hunt for the one who hunts their client. She stands in a family home that's not hers and tries to convince herself the walls aren't whispering about the sun's demise. She forces down a scream that locks itself in her throat when her hands clasp around a picture of happier days and she thinks of all the things she would like to tell Kevin for the first time in forever. She doesn't know why she can't shake this man who's at war with the entire city.

She tells herself she doesn't know, anyway, even when her dreams turn purest blinding white.

*****

They walk into the hospital room together, she and the man she once thought was the universe's answer to a question she never asked, and she lets go of his hand.

Someone has strapped warfare down on the bed before them and she almost laughs at how _wrong_ it feels. They warn about the line on the floor that nobody is allowed to cross as though that _ridiculous_ tape is the shield that would protect anyone from war's wrath. She almost shakes her head at that. Hears war rumble out answers into the quiet of the room. Suddenly, she's the one who's strapped down on the bed and he's the one who's walking free and there isn't a line to cross anymore that she hasn't already stepped over a million times in her mind.

Her hand clasps the picture she took on her hunt. Her feet carry her toward the bed unflinchingly. She has to talk about what he lost in the fire of death. She has to know if it feels anything like the constant drifting motion she thinks loss is meant to be. She leans in close enough for him to meet her gaze. Thunder trembles through her ears when midnight dark searches her face for answers.

There is a breath she has been holding since three days after Kevin's death.

She lets it go.

*****

"I had a dream about you!"

She shouts it into the unforgiving cold. Screams it into midnight woodlands that never quite reach far enough to touch the stars in the sky. Trembles it through her teeth a second time until the reality of it settles underneath her skin. It's all she can think of that will halt him in his tracks long enough. All she can think of that will help her make sense of war.

He blinks at her. "What did you say?" His voice is rough, hinged on the promise of vengeance as he is, and she almost balks at the danger that lurks behind the open door.

"I said," she says, taking a step toward gunpowder and endless pouring rain, "that I had a dream about you."

"Bullshit," he claims, but his eyes finally dart toward her face after he's been avoiding looking at her all night. "Nobody dreams of me. Not--"

"Maria didn't dream about _you_ ," she whispers, and somehow the world comes to a standstill around them. "She dreamed about Frank Castle. Frank Castle dreamed about her. I'm not touching that."

His fingers tremble a staccato rhythm until his hands grow steady. "Nobody has two dreams," he says, then, and the world explodes in technicolour frenzy before her eyes. "Thought it was just going to be Maria. That the other was.."

"A fluke." She knows it before he says it. Laughs it into the air between them as though the cosmic joke has finally been told in full. "That's me. The fluke. The one who wasn't meant to live."

His brow furrows. "You look plenty alive to me, ma'am." His tone tiptoes on reverence before settling into soft reassurance. "I should be the one to know that." His smile curves around the rage that lurks underneath his skin. She takes another step toward him when his voice grows so soft that she can barely hear it. His whisper trembles into the night's silence and folds around her heart. "I had a dream about you, too."


End file.
